Networking the World, 1794-2000

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MEDIA STUDIES/history
In the age of satellites and the Internet, worldwide communication has become increasingly unified amid overblown claims about the redemptive possibilities of international networks. But this rhetoric is hardly new. As Armand Mattelart demonstrates in Networking the World, iyg4—2000, globalization and its attendant hype have existed since road and rail were the fastest way to move information.
Mattelart places contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that the networking of the world began much earlier than many assume, in the late eighteenth century. He argues that the internationalization of communication was spawned by such Enlightenment ideals as universaUsm and liberalism, and examines how the development of global communications has been inextricably linked to the industrial revolution, modern warfare, and the emergence of nationalism. Throughout, Mattelart refutes the contention that a networked world is a better,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

MEDIA STUDIES/history
In the age of satellites and the Internet, worldwide communication has become increasingly unified amid overblown claims about the redemptive possibilities of international networks. But this rhetoric is hardly new. As Armand Mattelart demonstrates in Networking the World, iyg4—2000, globalization and its attendant hype have existed since road and rail were the fastest way to move information.
Mattelart places contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that the networking of the world began much earlier than many assume, in the late eighteenth century. He argues that the internationalization of communication was spawned by such Enlightenment ideals as universaUsm and liberalism, and examines how the development of global communications has been inextricably linked to the industrial revolution, modern warfare, and the emergence of nationalism. Throughout, Mattelart refutes the contention that a networked world is a better, more unified world, and demonstrates a more insidious aspect, eloquently arguing that discourses of better living through globalization mask projects of political, economic, and cultural domination.
ARMAND MATTELART is professor of information and communication sciences at the Université de Paris-VllI, Saint-Denis. He is the author of Mapping World Communication, The Invention of Communication, and coauthor with Michele Mattelart of Rethinking Media Theory, all published in English by the University of Minnesota Press.
LIZ CAREY-LIBBRECHT is a freelance translator living in France.
JAMES A. COHEN is professor of political science at the Université de Paris-VIII, Saint-Denis and at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. Vissza